I plan to brew an Imperial IPA tomorrow. Here’s a link to the recipe.
I want to use Citra, Amarillo & Simcoe in the brew. However, I’ve never used Citra or Simcoe, so I don’t know how much or when to add them. I just took a guess when I created my recipe. Does anyone think I need to change my hops schedule? I could substitute with Cascade, if you think that would work better. The last thing I want is a beer that tastes like cat piss! LOL!
I’ve used Simcoe a few times and haven’t gotten any cat piss taste. Maybe I just don’t pick it up. I have never added it before 15 min though. If you are worried drop the 40 min addition and increase the bittering addition.
I’m making an ‘express IPA’ Sunday with the same combination. I haven’t finalized the hop bill yet but I’m leaning towards bittering primarily with the Simcoe, late additions of Amarillo and Cirtra and dry hopping with equal amounts of each.
I started using Simcoe as my bitter hop in my APA w/ Cascade at the beginning of the year. It’s a great beer that everyone really enjoys. No cat piss taste w/ Simcoe at 60 min. I’ve never brewed w/ amarillo or citra, so no first hand knowledge of those two.
You may want to add 2-5% of dextrose, i.e. corn sugar just to help dry it out a little? You have a strong malt bill and no crystal malt, which I like. What is your mash temp? I would shoot for somewhere between 147-149*F.
I like your hop choices. I would use a neutral hop like magnum or warrior for your main bittering charge. Amarillo, citra, and simcoe are to valuable to waste as a bittering charge. I would bump up amount of your late hops a bit and move them to a little later in the boil (less than 20 minutes). If it is an IIPA, it has to be dry hopped, IMHO. I would use at least 1oz. each of citra, amarillo, and simcoe. I like to build my dryhop based on my boil hop schedule. I recently dry hopped with 1oz. of citra, amarillo, and simcoe in a pale ale and the beer at the moment is fantastic! Even my wife loves it (which is saying a lot). It took a while for the flavors to mesh and come together, but now they are very floral and tropical fruit. Very smooth, no cat piss ;D
I’m really enjoying an IPA I just brewed using these three hops in combination for flavor/aroma. I used 1/2 oz of Chinook at 60 minutes for my bittering charge, then I used 1/2 oz each of Simcoe, Amarillo and Citra at 15, 10, 5, and flameout. I did a 30-minute hot steep/whirlpool. Then I dry-hopped with 3/4 oz of each. The main notes are the tropical fruit from the Citra highlighted by some floral notes from the Amarillo. The Simcoe gives a nice resiny bite and adds some real nice complexity.
My recommendation is to get rid of your 30 and 40 minute additions (and maybe even the 20-minute one). Add those at flameout and do a long whirlpool before chilling. At 30 and 40 minutes you aren’t getting much flavor or aroma contribution from those hops, since most of the hop oils will boil off. You really want to add them as late as possible. I’d also dry hop with at least an ounce of each of the hops.
The more hoppy beers I brew, the more simple I keep my hop schedule. For my next hop bomb, my hop schedule is probably going to be something like this:
60 min - 0.5 oz of Columbus or Chinook
10 min - massive addition of a blend of all my flavor/aroma hops
Flameout - another massive addition of the hop blend
Dry hop - split the remaining hops in 3 batches and add them each 3 days apart. Bottle 3 days after the last addition.
I get the same exact thing here. I’m loving the Amarillo and Citra combo in the dry hops. Next time I think I’m going to swap out the Simcoe for some NZ aroma hops like Nelson, Motueka and/or Rakau and really push the tropical fruit.
I think I must be one of the few homebrewers who doesn’t really care for Citra. Just too weirdly fruity for my tastes. I know of least a couple commercial brewers who fell the same way.
I was kind of thinking along those same lines. I want to use hops I have on hand and was considering Summit for the bittering hop. I haven’t used Summit so was kind of waffling back towards Simcoe.
Simcoe too valuable to waste as bittering? Could you explain this for me, I’ve only been brewing since Oct. 2011, so I was wondering what your opinion on this is. I’ve used magnum in the same APA recipe @ 60min, but when I switched Simcoe for Magnum the beer came out better, and my wife liked it much better (which also is saying a lot). I thought it had more of a “tropical” taste than w/ magnum, but maybe that’s just in my head. Sorry, don’t mean to hijack the thread.
After reading everyone’s input, I’ve decided to use the Simcoe as the only bittering hop. I will use a combination of the 3 toward the end of the boil and for dry hopping. I also picked up some specialty grains for increasing the color. Thanks for the help!
Hops like Simcoe, Amarillo, and Citra are in high demand and hard to find not only on the homebrew scale, but professional as well. And “when” you do find some, it comes at a premium cost. It seems like a waste to me to use a hop know for it’s wonderful flavor and aromatic properties as a bittering addition when those volitile hop oils will be boiled off when using it as a 60 or 90 minute addition. IIPA are all about massive flavors and aromas from late and dry hops. Using a good low co-hulomone high AA% hop as a bittering source adds a smoother bitterness, but will have little if any flavor impact on the final beer.
I think the Union Jack recipe that Matt Bryndilson gave out on the BN had Simcoe as the bittering hop. It has low cohumulone, and works well for bittering. Some like its aromatics so much they say that is a waste.
Vinnie Cilurzo says he uses the Simcoe from Carpenter Farms for bittering, and then for dryhoping. Maybe that one has more cat pee if used later in the boil?
The website lists it as a blend of warrior and simcoe for Union Jack. JZ and Tasty just used 25 grams of warrior as the bittering hop in the clone recipe. Most large scale commercial breweries are using hop extract as their bittering charge anymore to cut down on the hop mass and kettle loss these days anyways. Most of these extracts are just a blend of high AA%, low-cohumulone hops like CTZ, summit, apollo, and warrior (to name a few). So that tells you that the hop used for bittering is really inconsecequential in terms of flavor contribution. All the brewers are looking for are IBUs.
I was just at my LHBS to get the additional specialty grains. Not going back before I brew. I’ll see if a friend of mine has some bittering hops like Columbus or Chinook I can use. I don’t think I have anything like that at home. Otherwise, I’ll use the Simcoe for bittering.
Columbus and Chinook are my personal preference for bittering, but there are plenty of other options too. Nugget, Magnum, Galena will all do a fine job as well.
I can’t confirm through my own brewing experience, but the only time I’ve ever tasted “cat pee” from Simcoe was in an all-Simcoe beer. A common opinion is that using Simcoe as a 60-minute bittering addition is what leads to the whole cat pee thing (I’ve heard the same about Citra as well). Others have reported using Simcoe at 60 minutes with no pee, so YMMV.
I just know that I haven’t had the stones to try Simcoe as a bittering addition, since every beer I’ve used it in has had at least 20 bucks worth of hops in it and I haven’t wanted to risk it. Whatever you end up doing, please keep us posted on your results.
